Megatooth: A Deep Sea Thriller Read online

  Emily couldn’t help but notice the look of worry on Steve’s face. She suspected that he hadn’t taken the time to read over everything this trip entailed. Between the cramped sleeping quarters, the lack of food, and the uneventful hours on the open sea, she had a feeling that Steve might be resenting this trip as early as tomorrow morning. A small part of her was almost flattered that he would take part in such a thing just to be alone with her—especially if it made him this uncomfortable. Sure, it was borderline creepy, but the attention was nice. It wasn’t like she had guys knocking down her door for a chance to spend time with her.

  Emily took one of the bags and, eager to please, Steve took the other one. They went down to the small central area of the cabin and started filling the cabinets and shelves with the food. There were crackers, Cheerios, a few loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, a pack of pudding cups, a case of bottled water, and a case of Gatorade.

  “Not much like the cruise you went on with your folks, huh?” Zoe asked Steve as she came down the stairs.

  “No, not at all,” Steve said, making no effort to hide his annoyance.

  As he hunched over his bag, Zoe gave Emily a smile and a roll of the eyes. Emily nodded her agreement and appreciation and continued to unpack.

  3

  Thirty-six miles away from where Cliff Zinsser was about to take three students out on their first open-sea adventure, three men were undergoing their own adventure. They were on a boat that was not too dissimilar to the one that Cliff and his crew had rented, only theirs did not come from a rental shop. Their boat was owned and maintained by a small yet relatively wealthy company called MarineEx. Only a handful of people knew the vessel was on the water and not all of those selected few even knew why the crew was out there.

  Carl Peters knew, though. As he walked along the deck of the boat and looked out to the ocean, he stared with hope. To his right, coming off of a mechanical device that he barely understood, a large metal tube extended outward, took a sharp angle, and then plummeted into the water. The device beside him, which was really nothing more than a glorified super pump, made a constant humming noise that reminded him of the old crappy air conditioning unit he’d had in his first apartment.

  The device was hooked into a monitoring system that was installed in the cabin, being watched over by Trevor Thomas, an irritable man that rarely came out of the cabin. In the course of the three days they’d been out at sea, Trevor had come out of the cabin only four times and had not spoken unless spoken to. That was fine with Carl. Trevor was in the middle of a nasty divorce and wasn’t exactly the most cheerful person in the world to talk to.

  Still, the only other person on the boat was a man named Bo—a Korean engineer that had the humor and personality of roadkill. He was strictly business-minded and there was something about him that brought out the mean jock in both Carl and Trevor—even though neither of them had been jocks in high school. Bo had a last name that was almost impossible to pronounce, so both Carl and Trevor had stopped trying and he had always simply been “Bo” to them.

  So in terms of having people to break up the monotony of this experimental trip, there was no one. Carl felt like he was stranded, taking part in some weird social experiment.

  True, the purpose of their journey was experimental in a way. They were out here performing a very cutting edge and controversial form of deep ocean mining. It was really just a research trip more than anything, a way to see if the overpriced set-up that they were carrying on board would actually work. If it did work, Carl knew that he would get a very nice paycheck soon after they returned to land. And if it didn’t work, then they’d be back out here again within six weeks for a third attempt. And that would be fine with Trevor; it would give him more time to tinker with the rovers that were currently investigating the ocean floor beneath them.

  As Carl looked out to the clear skies and the calm seas, he heard footsteps coming around the corner of the cabin. He found it hard to believe that Trevor had come out of the cabin and abandoned his precious equipment, so he assumed it was Bo. He turned around to find that he was correct.

  “How are ya?” Carl asked.

  “Okay,” Bo said. “I’d be better if we were getting more results.”

  “Same here,” Carl said. “I do not want to end up back out here six weeks from now.”

  “Can we not get an extension on our stay this time?” Bo asked.

  “No. The latest we can return tomorrow is seven in the afternoon.”

  “That’s no good,” Bo said and walked over to the large metal extension. He glanced at it like a hopeful child before turning his head to the east. “When should we relocate?” he asked.

  “Let’s give it another hour here,” Carl said. “Then we’ll move on.”

  “Sounds good,” Bo said. “I’ll tell Trevor.”

  Better you than me, Carl thought.

  With Bo gone, Carl returned his attention to the pump-device that looked nothing like a pump but rather some abstract upside down ventilation pipe from a wood stove. Although Carl was the supervisor of the small crew, he knew the least about the equipment but he had at least a fundamental understanding of what the mining equipment was supposed to do. All he knew was that his head was the one that would roll if anything happened to any of this expensive and experimental crap.

  The large tube-like thing attached to the boat and plunged into the water was a hybrid of a basic pump (although a high-powered one) and a souped-up metal detector. The detector was under water, attached to the pump and suction device via a tether that Bo could remotely operate and keep tabs on. This pump was referred to as The Collector, namely because the actual terminology MarineEx had applied to it was overly complicated.

  As a crew, they used Trevor’s surveying equipment to locate large pockets of polymetallic nodules and hydrothermal vents. These locations were usually rich in sulfide deposits—prime targets for copper, manganese, silver, and gold.

  Once the detector—which looked like a miniaturized version of the Mars Rover, minus the treads—picked up one of these deposits, they would submerge six rovers down below. Each rover was built just like the detector, only much bigger. The size of a small car, each rover was equipped with blades and drills that could be remotely directed to cut and clear away debris and seabed from any direction. These were the auxiliary cutters and were the most expensive part of their set-up. Once the cutters were in business, the pump—the Collector—was turned on and anything of note was brought to the boat and dumped into the device’s filtration system. The filtration system then sorted the useless debris from the precious treasure.

  So far, there was very little precious treasure to be found. This was not good, especially considering that they were currently perched high above several large sulfide deposits. Carl didn’t have an exact figure, but he was pretty sure this one trek alone was costing MarineEx about $250,000—not to mention the fifteen million they had spent on the rovers and the pump system.

  Coming back with no reason to be excited could be disastrous. Sure, they’d just send him back out in a few weeks, but he wasn’t sure how long they would keep sending him out if he came back without results. And while these trips were boring and monotonous, he also knew that his job could be on the line.

  He heard another set of footsteps, these much harder and pronounced than Bo’s. He looked to his right and saw Trevor come walking down the thin walkway between the pump and the cabin. Carl didn’t even have time to make a smart-assed comment about the bear coming out of hibernation before Trevor started with his inane questions. He never seemed to run out of dumb unanswerable questions and now was no different.

  “Are you kidding me with this tomorrow afternoon stuff?” Trevor asked as he neared Carl. “You can’t get them to push it?”

  “No,” Carl said. “We’ve already talked about this.”

  “Yes, but how in the hell am I supposed to work the kinks out in my software and formulas if we keep coming and going in four day i
ncrements?”

  “Why are you just now asking me these things?” Carl asked, now attacking with his own questions.

  “Because the detectors are doing better than I expected. Sure, they aren’t really finding much of anything, but they’re performing spectacularly. And the Collector is pulling with more strength and accuracy than I had hoped.”

  “That’s great,” Carl said. “Write a report stating as much and maybe they’ll consider giving you some extra time the next time we come out.”

  Trevor gave him a scowl and shook his head in frustration. “Just call and ask, man.”

  “It’s no use,” Carl said. “They won’t change it.”

  “And you don’t want to upset them. Is that right?”

  “That is right,” Carl said. “We’re going back with very little results. I’d like to find as few other reasons as possible to piss them off even more.”

  Trevor fumed and looked out to sea. He shook his head and gave a condescending little laugh. “We work for idiots. You know that, right? I know they’re afraid it might cost them some unexpected expense to stay out here another day or so. But they can’t see past their fat wallets to understand that they’d be saving money in the long run if they just let us run the show out here.”

  Carl actually agreed with this line of thinking, but there was no way he was going to let Trevor know that. “Well, I can pass that message along if you’d like,” he said, trying to get his point across without being confrontational.

  “Whatever,” Trevor said, storming away. “I guess I’d better make use of the little bit of time I do have.”

  Carl sighed and looked to the pump again. When he did, he saw something bobbing up out of the water roughly forty feet away from the boat. It glistened in the late morning light but it was hard to tell what it was—the sheen of it and the way it moved almost playfully in the water made him think it was a dolphin.

  He glanced out, focusing on that area and saw it again. When he saw it this time, he realized that the object wasn’t bobbing at all. It was being moved by the water, its motionless shape being pushed by the idle surface of the water. The water moved it slowly, bringing it closer to the boat.

  It took only a few moments for Carl to piece together the fact that what he was seeing was a dead fish of some sort—a very large fish, at that. Maybe he had been right to assume it had been a dolphin in the first place. It seemed to have a light grey skin, although the sunlight and the movement of the water made it hard to see clearly.

  Curious, he turned towards the cabin, wanting to grab his binoculars from his quarters. When he did, he saw Bo coming back around the corner.

  “Everything okay?” Carl asked, surprised to see Bo again so soon.

  “Yes. I was up top, wasting time, honestly. I looked out to sea and saw that,” he said, pointing to where Carl had been looking moments ago.

  “I saw that, too,” Carl said. “I was just heading in to get my binoculars.”

  “It’s a sperm whale,” Bo said. “I’m fairly certain.”

  “Yeah?” Carl asked.

  “I think so. There are waters out this way that are popular with poachers.”

  “Why would people poach sperm whales?” Carl asked.

  Bo only shrugged. “It’s a shame, though. They are beautiful creatures.”

  Then, as if he had just laid down some profound knowledge, Bo walked to the rail and looked out to the dead whale somberly. Carl looked back out to, his binoculars temporarily forgotten. As the water drew the whale closer, he started to get a real idea of the thing’s size. It was a massive creature and something about it being dead didn’t quite seem right. He found it hard to imagine a human being killing such a thing—not because he thought humans were incapable of such cruelty (he knew they were), but because the thing was just so damned big.

  He joined Bo, looking out to the whale as it came closer and closer. Beside him, the pump hummed on, all business as usual. Carl eyed the whale, its grey hide now clear and almost shimmering in the play of sunlight on the water. He felt bad for the creature but, at the same time, was reminded just how large the sea was and how many unseen horrors took place on its waters.

  He also scanned the horizon for other boats, wondering if they might find themselves in danger if a poacher ship did show up. But the horizon was clear and the waters were calm and almost pristine. Still, something about the dead whale approaching their boat unnerved him and no matter how hard he focused on the formulaic hum of the pump beside him, he could not shake it.

  4

  Two hours into their trip, Cliff brought the boat to a stop. The engine puttered while they were pushed along by the waves. He called his crew of three up while he looked out to the water through the windows of the bridge.

  Emily heard the call from the back of the ship where she had been sitting in a trance-like state, watching the ocean unravel behind her. At Cliff’s instruction, she got up right away. Wondering if they had already found a poaching vessel, she grew excited as she went into the cabin and up the stairs to the bridge.

  Zoe was already on her way up the stairs, eager to please. Emily was well aware of Steve coming up the stairs behind her and she could practically feel his eyes on her rear as she climbed up. A shudder passed through her but she managed to shrug it off when she was in the bridge and looking straight ahead.

  “So, this is a recent hot spot,” Cliff said. “Less than two weeks ago, most of my sources agree that at least two poaching vessels were spotted in these waters. We know that minke whales and sperm whales are often targeted in these areas. So what I need you guys to do is to keep your eyes peeled for the next few hours. Take posts along the boat and let me know right away if you see any other boats.”

  “Excuse me for asking,” Steve said, “but what are we supposed to do if we come across poachers? We can’t exactly scare them away.”

  “You’re right,” Cliff said. “But we can take their information and call it in, like I already said. Officials will be out within a few hours. As I said before, it’s not our job to stop the poachers, but to turn them in and see to it that they pay for what they have done.”

  Steve said nothing; he just looked out to the ocean as if he had just found something of interest out there. It was clear that he was bored, annoyed, and really didn’t want to be there. Emily was furious with him and it took every ounce of energy within her not to snap at him. Was he seriously trying to purposefully get on the bad side of the man that was leading this expedition? She was relieved to see that Cliff already seemed to be getting fed up with it, too.

  “Son, why are you even here?” Cliff asked.

  Emily knew the answer but didn’t dare say it at the risk of sounding conceited. Besides…she wanted to see what answer Steve could come up with. She was surprised at how blunt the question was. Cliff had never struck her as the confrontational type.

  “To help protect the whales,” Steve said, trying his best to feign hurt feelings.

  “Yeah?” Cliff asked. “What’s your major?”

  “Journalism.”

  Cliff made a hmmm sound and then shrugged. “I get the feeling you aren’t here with the same passion as these two young ladies,” he said. “I hope I’m wrong about that.”

  “You are,” Steve said, now practically fuming. He took a few steps toward the stairs leading back down into the central cabin but was halted by more comments from Cliff.

  “That’s good,” Cliff said. Emily could hear the anger in his voice and was reminded of the passion this man had not just for sperm whales, but other endangered oceanic species as well. “Because I wouldn’t want to waste your time out here if you weren’t well-informed about the horrific deaths these whales endure at the hands of far too many asshole humans. That would include being harpooned numerous times with explosives and then drug behind vessels until it's brought up to the main boat and then shot several times with a high-powered rifle. They’re shot in the stomach with those explosive harpoons and as if that�
�s not torture enough, they are then dragged for miles, suffering and bleeding across the sea—across their home. And that’s after they’ve been hunted and chased to the point of exhaustion.”

  “I didn’t ask for a—” Steve started to say, but Cliff was on a roll and would not be interrupted.

  “What happens to them out here on these waters is so bad that even whaling insiders have said that if whales had any way to scream, the whaling industry would have closed up shop a long time ago.”

  Steve stood there for a moment, his mouth simply hanging open as if a word or two planned to spill out. After a few awkward seconds, though, he closed it and just walked down the stairs.

  When he was gone, Cliff turned to Emily and Zoe with a slightly embarrassed look on his face. “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “No problem,” Emily said. “I think you were justified.”

  “You guys know him pretty well?”

  “Not me,” Zoe said.

  “I do,” Emily said with a frown. “And yeah, his reasons for being here might not exactly be the right ones.”

  “How so?” Cliff asked.

  Emily shrugged, trying to think of the right way to say it. As it turned out, though, she was able to sidestep the question. A static-laced squeal came from the radio behind Cliff.

  “Zinsser, you there?” a voice asked through the hiss and crackle of radio static.

  Cliff picked up the small mic and responded while fiddling with the controls on the radio. “Yeah, I’m here. Who is this?”

  “It’s Harper,” came the voice again, clearer this time now that Cliff had fine-tuned the signal. “I’ve got a tip…maybe not the best and surely not a certified source, but maybe worth checking out since you’re already out that way.”

  “Sure thing,” Cliff said. “What have you got?”

  “We’ve got reports of an undocumented ship out your way…to the west of where you are.”